Big Bucks Ahead For Bay Cleanup

The House of Representatives has voted to give scientists and farmers nearly $20 million to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.

The spending still must be approved in the Senate's version of the budget bill.

More than half the $19.8 million would go to farmers in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania who apply for grants to keep manure and fertilizers out of the bay and its tributaries, said Bill Matuszeski, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program office in Annapolis, Md.

The rest would pay for research projects, educational programs and efforts to preserve fish, shellfish and sea grasses. And about $300,000 would be used to operate the EPA's Chesapeake Bay office, which monitors the health of the bay.

``Our emphasis is to move away from fisheries management that focuses on a single species and toward an effort that looks at the bay as a whole, to understand how everything lives and works together,'' Matuszeski said.

The $19.8 million allocation - a $3.6 million increase from current spending - is part of a bill that includes the EPA's budget, said Dan Scandling, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, R-Newport News, who is member of a House subcommittee that monitors bay research.